


Prospect (Perspective)

by AwkwardTiming



Series: One Step at a Time [6]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Decision Making, M/M, NHL prospect Bitty, Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 17:47:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16602668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardTiming/pseuds/AwkwardTiming
Summary: Prospect camps and heading back to school





	Prospect (Perspective)

“…Yeah, that’s pretty much what Luc was saying. The ones that don’t overlap and are most in the running based on play style and farm team performance are Providence and Quebec City, although if I can make the one in Houston or San Diego, I’d like to. I don’t think I want to play either place, but they both seem to be focusing on building a team with speed. And it might be good to see what I think of a Western Conference team. Quebec City is similar, in terms of speed, and the farm team is in Laval, which looks beautiful. But, Lord, Jack, honey. Can you imagine me on a French-speaking team?  I am never, ever going to let anyone know I took French. The chirping would be ridiculous.”

“You’ve… improved?” Bitty’s snort in response made Jack smile. “Anyway, Quebec is before Providence or San Diego, right? I was planning to head home to Montreal after Lardo, Rans, and Holtz’s graduation for a couple days. Do you want to plan to come with me or do you still want to stay in Providence?”

“If I come with you are you going to make me keep up with training?” Jack was quiet on the other end of the line and Bitty rolled his eyes. “Yeah, ok. I want to come with you. Plus it will give me a chance to meet with Luc in person before he comes down in August to go over everything for this next year if I decide to pursue this.”

“Did you want to talk through –”

“Jack, you are the sweetest, but you still have a season to finish and I have finals. I’m going to make a list of things I know I will need to improve if I want a shot at this and review it with Ransom and Holster and then run it by you and your dad in June. So. Tell me about your day. How’s Marty’s hand? Is Tater still complaining about George figuring out he was trying to prank her?”

_X_

“I really appreciate you both helping me with this when you’ve got your own finals to study for.”

“Brah. Senior year. It’s all good. Plus, this is like way more important, you know?” Holster was laying upside down on Ransom’s bed with his head hanging off, but sat up as Bitty came in and moved to sit next to Ransom. “So where are you with that, man?” Holster asked, laying a hand on Ransom’s shoulder.

“I’ve cross-referenced the relative weight to height to muscle mass to fat of the last three year’s of rookie classes with current forwards in the NHL. For your height, Bits, which, hey, congrats on finally hitting 5’8”, which makes you officially not in the super short category for the league. So, for your height, you’re a little on the light side, but only by like 15-20 pounds, and it’s actually more on the fat side that you’re under. You are super lean man. But, you could use another 10-15 pounds of muscle before your rookie season anyway.”

Holster took over talking at that point, “Your cardio’s good, obvs. At least until graduation, I’m up for weights and training on the daily and we can probably get some extra ice time for drills and checking at least a couple times a week. Especially since, you know, no playoffs.”

All three boys grimaced.

Bitty nodded after a moment. “That all makes sense.” With a wry sort of grimace he said, “I guess I need to up my protein intake, huh?”

Ransom clicked over to a second spreadsheet, “Based on your ability to build muscle with your usual diet and exercise, these are the changes excel suggests to both nutrition and workout.”

“I don’t know whether to proclaim my love for the both of you or what,” Bitty replied with a roll of his eyes, leaning over to look at what magic Ransom had worked with excel.

_X_

The rest of the semester passed in the blink of an eye and suddenly Bitty was sitting on a plane next to Jack. Jack was watching tape of the Falcon’s incoming rookie class and Bitty was… watching tape to prepare for his first camp. Once he’d started to hear some of the names he would be seeing at camp, he’d looked for whatever he could find on YouTube. While it wasn’t really a competition at this stage, Jack had pointed out that it was always useful to see what sort of skills other players were bringing to the ice.

Jack tapped him on the arm as Bitty rewound a particular pass for the fourth time. He paused and looked up, tugging out his earbuds.

“What are you trying to figure out with that pass?” Jack asked, nodding at the screen.

“Honestly, how the defenseman missed it entirely. He’s watching the puck and it’s like he just lost sight of it.”

“He does,” Jack started the video again. “Right there,” he pointed at the screen, “he starts looking at Patrick’s feet instead of the puck because Patrick’s moving his feet and shielding the puck with his stick.”

Bitty rewound the video again and saw it. The moment that Patrick let his skates slide slightly differently than they would if he was truly driving to the net and, as a result, drew the attention of the defenseman just long enough to give Patrick a clean lane to make the pass.

“I could do that,” Bitty said, looking up at Jack.

“You have done that. Not consciously, I guess, but you’re agile enough that you don’t move like most hockey players, eh?”

Bitty quirked a small smile at Jack, who smiled back before returning to his own video.

The next couple of weeks passed quickly and Bitty was soon back on a plane, this time bound for San Diego. He’d actually called to decline the invitation, but their special teams coach had called and encouraged him to come out if he could. After a quick chat with Jack – which led to Bob sitting down with them and making up pro-con lists for each of the prospect camps – Bitty’d bought the ticket and changed the flight back to Providence to be from San Diego instead of Quebec City.

All in all, he thought as he grabbed lunch in Denver before he boarded for San Diego, he was glad things were shaping up the way they were. He’d been too busy to really think about the fact that Mama was only really responding to the occasional text message and that Coach’s email responses, when he responded, had tended to be focused on the sport he played and stayed very firmly away from anything really personal.

Still, he supposed, it was a slight improvement. And, yeah, so it made him mad – if he thought about it too hard – that they needed time to adjust or whatever, but he also got it. He still loved them and was pretty sure they still loved him. If what they needed was time, fine. In the meantime, he had Jack and the team and a very full summer ahead of him.

_X_

The week in Quebec City flew by and before Bitty could even blink he was back on a plane with some new phone numbers in his phone, sore muscles, and trainer recommendations for the coming year. He couldn’t tell what they’d really thought of him as a skater, but three years in a locker room with his team at Samwell had meant he got along well with the other players at the camp. Sure, they may have chirped him for how well he did in the cooking classes, but none of them had hesitated to ask him to share what he’d made or how to fix whatever they’d done to that poor piece of chicken.

He was glad, when he landed in San Diego, that he’d let Jack convince him to let Jack pay for a nicer hotel closer to the training facility and that he had a few days before the next camp started. Just a few, but it was enough time to get a massage and sleep in a bit. And catch up with the group chat.

Ransom and Holster were celebrating graduation with a trip to Peru and Ransom’s contributions were made up almost entirely of pictures of Holster next to alpaca, which Ransom insisted was them trying to find Holster’s brother with increasingly ridiculous poses on Holster’s part. The rest of the team would chime in periodically, rating the likelihood of the relationship and discussing points of similarity. Generally focusing on whether or not the teeth were the same.

Other than that, Dex was in New York with Nursey, both of them doing summer internships – though at different companies. Both seemed to be doing well. Chowder and Farmer were on a two week vacation driving from San Diego, and hoping to meet up with Bitty before heading out, to the Redwood National Park with plenty of stops to explore. Shitty had agreed – reluctantly – to intern for a firm his father had recommended, which was turning out to be full of as many bros as he’d feared, but they did work he could actually get behind, so his overall reaction to the whole thing had been sort of, “meh.”

Lardo was mostly off the grid, having taken advantage of a break before she needed to start at the art gallery where she’d found a job to explore and relax.

_X_

Bitty had just finished his morning run (and dear God – who would believe that three years passing would mean Bitty was 100% on board with waking up earlier than strictly necessary every morning to get in a quick 10 mile run) when his phone buzzed through with a text from an unknown number.

312-995-4993: Hey – got your number from Cully. He said you’re at the SD camp this week and that I should look you up.

EB: I am! You know Dan McCullough?

312-995-4993: Yeah, man. Played in Juniors.

EB: Oh! You must be Daisy?

ID: Ian Daiselly, yeah. I just got in – want to grab lunch later? Hang a bit before camp tomorrow? Cully said you’re wicked fast.

EB: Sounds great. I’m heading up to take a shower, but I could be ready for lunch in an hour?

ID: sweet sauce. Brunch, Mexican, or seafood?

EB: Uh – if you have a recommendation, I’m good with it. Sounds like you’ve done more research than I have.

ID: I’ve got fam down here. Fig Tree Cafe. See you there around 11:30?

EB: *thumbs up*

Bitty sent Jack a quick text with his pace for the morning. They’d started up a bit of a friendly competition and he’d beat Jack’s time this morning, so clearly he needed to gloat a bit.

JZ: ha. Nice. I’ll have to go faster tomorrow.

EB: :P

Bitty then sent a text to Cully.

EB: hanging with your friend Daisy today.

DM: shit. Sorry, meant to tell you I gave him your digits.

EB: Who says digits?

DM: cool people. Obvs.

EB: you’re a dork

DM: don’t front. you love me. Anyway, so Daisy’s actually kinda shy. You seem pretty nice, so I thought maybe you’d, like, be cool with being his friend for camp.

EB: awwwww looking out for your friend. That’s so sweet.

DM: fuck you. I’m a badass.

EB: Sure sure. Hey – gotta go, but good luck with your summer o-chem lab. That sounds, frankly, fucking awful.

DM: kill me now

_X_

“Hey, honey,” Bitty said, settling against the headboard.

“Hey, Bits. You sound tired.”

“Lord, everything hurts. Everything. The last two weeks have been amazing, but I’m ready for a break.”

“Aw, I’m sorry bud. At least you’ve got a couple weeks before Providence starts, eh? What time does your flight get in tomorrow?” Jack asked and Bitty could hear some shuffling around of something from Jack’s end of the call.

“Uhm…Let me look. Delta – 2:47PM. I can take a car, though, sugar. That’s right in the middle of your day.”

“I don’t want to wait any longer than I have to to see you. I’ve missed you, bud.”

“I’ve missed you, too. I’ll see you tomorrow. I can’t wait.” Bitty yawned. “Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Bitty tossed his phone to the side and reached for the room phone. He may have just finished prospect dinner a couple hours ago, but he was hungry and not quite ready to sleep yet.

He found a movie playing that he’d been wanting to see and rented it, waiting until his food was delivered to press play.

Settled on his bed with a stack of pancakes, a fruit cup, scrambled eggs, and roasted chicken breast, Bitty relaxed and ate and watched his movie. When the movie ended, Bitty moved his tray to the hall and brushed his teeth. He double checked that everything was packed, then settled in for the night. He was ready to get back to Providence, and more importantly, Jack.

_X_

The last prospect camp for the summer was in Providence. He’d spent the two weeks between Houston and Providence working on flexibility. Gaining muscle mass was great, but part of his game was his flexibility, so he couldn’t ignore it. Jack’s birthday fell right in the middle of the prospect camp in Providence, so they’d decided to have a little SMH/Falconer’s get together to celebrate once the camp was over. The Falconer’s players would have a couple weeks after the prospect camp before their own training camp started up, so it made for a good time to have an end-of-summer get together.

The morning of the party found Jack and Bitty in Jack’s kitchen. Jack was scrambling eggs and Bitty was leaning against the counter, drinking coffee with his eyes mostly closed.

“Is it bad that I don’t really want to do this party tonight?” Bitty asked softly.

“No – do you want me to cancel?” Jack asked.

Bitty shifted to rest his head against Jack’s shoulder. “We can’t do that. Wouldn’t be polite. I just need to get a bit more coffee in me.”

“You sure, bud?” Jack asked, shifting slightly so that he could put an arm around Bitty.

“Yeah. It’ll be good to see them. But then I want a couple of days just you and me with nothing to do.”

“Except train?”

Bitty thumped his head against Jack’s shoulder. “Nothing, Mr. Zimmermann. You. Me. Bed. Seems like a good couple days.”

“You’d miss your morning runs.”

“I kind of hate that you’re right. Eggs are done? Let’s eat. I need to get started on someone’s birthday pie.”

_X_

“Dude, Bits. What the fuck. You’ve got to be fucking me! You’re giving Jack a run for his money with that ass,” Shitty said, throwing his arm around Bitty’s shoulders.

“For real though, all hockey all the time looks good on you, bro,” Nursey chimed in.

Bitty grinned. “Thanks, y’all. It was quite the summer.”

“You went to three prospect camps. Three. Do you know how rare that is?” Dex asked.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, I figured that out.”

“So did you pick up new training ideas for this season, oh Captain, my Captain?” Nursey said, hooking his chin over Chowder’s shoulder.

“A couple ideas, yeah. We did these suicides in Houston,” Bitty cut off as everyone still at Samwell groaned.

“Bitty you are literally the only one who ever enjoys suicides. Literally.”

“Chowder likes them,” Bitty replied, grinning over at Chow.

Wicks stuck his tongue out at Bitty. “He likes them because he doesn’t have to do them. Seriously. They’re the worst. THE WOOORRRST.”

Bitty shrugged, “Well, if someone wanted to, say, deep clean the Haus before we move back in in a couple weeks, I’m sure I could be persuaded to keep the drill to myself.”

“On it!” Nursey said, pulling out his phone, and was promptly high-fived by Wicks and Dex.

Bitty took a sip of his beer and meandered over to where Jack was talking to Tater, Ransom, Holster, and Lardo.

A few hours later, the party wrapped up. Lardo and Shitty had claimed Jack’s guest room. Tater had offered to drop Ransom and Holster off at their hotel on his way home. Bitty knew, in a vague sort of way, that everyone else had also found their ways home. Bitty was brushing his teeth when Jack came in from locking up. Jack smiled at him in the mirror, then pressed a soft kiss below his ear.

Bitty smiled back as Jack straightened and reached for his own toothbrush. Bitty finished, then stood behind Jack, sliding his hands around Jack’s waist and resting his forehead between Jack’s shoulders.

“You ok back there, Bits?” Jack asked after he’d spat and rinsed his mouth.

“Mhm. Can’t believe the summer’s basically over, though.” Bitty felt Jack nod, so he continued with, “But I’m really glad I’ve got a couple more weeks with you before I head back to campus.”

“Me, too.”

When Bitty didn’t seem inclined to say anything else, Jack turned, then guided Bitty to bed. They settled in, snuggled together. Bitty stayed quiet for long enough that Jack wondered if he’d fallen asleep.

Just as Jack started to drift off, Bitty said, “Is it bad if, after all of that, I don’t know if I want to play after this year?”

Jack considered the question, running a soothing hand down Bitty’s back while he thought. “Bad? No, not at all. And you’ve got plenty of time to think about it. I think, right now though, that you should probably just not think about it, eh? You’ve got a season and a senior year to get ready for and it’s been – there’s been a lot going on this year so far. When you’re ready to really dig into what you want to do, let me know, but give yourself some time.”

Bitty shifted up onto his elbows to look at Jack in the faint light from the window. “When’d you get so smart, Mr. Zimmermann?”

Jack smiled what was one of Bitty’s favorite smiles – small and fond and teasing. “Born this way, I guess.”

Bitty shook his head and leaned up to give Jack a quick kiss. Pulling back, he said, “Modest, too. Good night, Jack. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Bits.”

_X_

After their morning run, Bitty had gone back to bed. It spoke volumes of how tired he was that he hadn’t even really tried to get Jack to come with him. Jack stretched on the floor, TV on in the background, while he thought about the conversation he had with Shitty during the party.

“Who’d have thought Bits would go pro? You cool with that, man?”

“Huh?” Jack had been Jack’s eloquent reply.

“I mean, like, you two don’t get to see each other much now and if he’s pro and, like, in CA,” Shitty had shrugged and Jack nodded his understanding.

“It will be different, but even if he is here with me and not working, there will still be stretches where we just don’t see each other much or at all.” Something occurred to Jack as he said that that rang so true that he had to give it voice immediately. “I think I’d rather he be happy with his day to day, even if it means only really having the occasional day or two day visit and summers together, than lonely or miserable in an uninteresting job here, you know? He should get to pursue whatever he wants. We have time. You wouldn’t ask Lardo to give up the gallery job so that she could always be home in the evening when you are, right?”

“What the fuck. No. But we live in the same city.”

“Bitty and I might, too. For all we know, if he goes pro, he’ll pick Providence or get an offer from somewhere else close. It will be almost a year out, though. There is time to work out the detail, you know? In the meantime, I want to make the most of the time I have with him.”

“Brah, I am so proud to be your friend. Bring it in.” With that, Shitty had thrown his arms around Jack’s neck and planted a slightly damp, rather whiskery kiss on his cheek.

Thinking back on it, Jack felt like he should make sure Bitty knew that’s where he stood on the whole thing. Not that he expected Bitty to change his decisions based on what Jack thought – but he did understand that Bitty, for all he had a stubborn streak a mile wide, would think himself round in circles before telling Jack that he wanted something if he thought that something might result in an inconvenience for Jack.

_X_

Bitty woke back up to the sound of Jack in the kitchen. Glancing at the clock by the bed, he decided Jack must be making lunch. He yawned and stretched and sat up. He pulled a t-shirt over his head and padded out to the kitchen, taking a seat at the breakfast bar and scrolling through notifications on his phone.

“Salads ok for lunch, bud?” Jack asked without turning around.

“Mmhm. Sounds good, honey.”

“I thought maybe we could go out to dinner tonight, if you want.”

“Sure, if you do.”

Jack slid a bowl across the counter to Bitty and set a glass of water next to it. Bitty smiled up at him in thanks and set his phone aside.

After a moment, Jack cleared his throat. “So, I know I said we could talk about it later – and we can, of course we can – but Shitty asked something last night and I wanted to make sure you knew. Whatever you want to do – whether it’s playing or baking or, I don’t know, whatever, really – whatever you want to do, I’m in this with you for as long as you want me around. You know that, right?”

Bitty fiddled with his fork a bit. “Really?”

“Yeah, bud, of course.”

“Even if I move to California to play hockey on some WCHL team?”

“Even then. Even if we both have long hockey careers, the chances of both of us playing past our forties is small. There will be time to spend together and there’s the off-season and bye weeks. We can make it work. And if it’s nothing like any of that, that’s fine, too.”

Bitty ducked his head. Quietly, he said, “Seems like an awful long way out, Mr. Zimmerman.”

Jack was taken aback for a moment until he recognized the slight quirk in Bitty’s lips. “As I have been told, I am 110% one hundred percent of the time.”

Bitty’s small smile became a full-on grin as he looked back up. It softened to something fonder after a moment and he said, “Thank you. I think I needed to hear that. It’s easy to get kind of…”

“Wrapped up in your own head?” When Bitty nodded, Jack continued, “I know. I get it. Bounce ideas off me. Explore your options.”

“Sometimes it feels like, if I get this opportunity, I should take it, you know? Because it’s not like I’ve really got skill in something that will lead to a job. Not like Dex or Chowder, or even Rans and Holster. And I’m not Nursey with his trust fund and grad school plans. I’m going to have to work when I graduate.”

“Sure, if you want, but I mean it when I say I’m in this. If you want my help – whatever help it is you need – just ask. There are bigger problems, you know?” Bitty quirked an eyebrow at that and Jack smiled in acknowledgement. “There will be opportunities. I want you to pick the one that’s right for you – whatever that is.”

“You are something special, Jack Zimmerman.” For the first time in what felt like months, Bitty felt himself settle inside, just slightly. There would be decisions to make, but that didn’t have to happen right now and knowing that Jack wanted to be involved and wanted to help? Well. That made it so much easier to relax and see what happened.


End file.
